This invention relates generally to business forms and envelopes and, more specifically, to a business form that retains receipts in an integral pocket and can be folded and sealed to form an envelope for mailing.
Economical operation of a business requires careful monitoring of the costs of doing business, including the expenses incurred by employees for promotional visits, sales meetings, and field service calls. Meticulous tabulation of these expenses is also required for income tax purposes. Typically, the monitoring is achieved by requiring employees of the business to tally these expenses on a daily basis, with a breakdown of expense categories such as meals, entertainment, transportation and lodging. The employee fills in the form with the amounts expended and returns the form to the employer's accounting department on a regular basis, such as weekly, monthly or bimonthly. The employee is also usually required to provide the accounting department with a receipt for each expense item entered on the form.
The receipts range in size from small ticket stubs to full size sheets of paper, making it easy for the employee to misplace a receipt between the time that he or she receives it and the time that the expense form is filled out and submitted. Moreover, receipts can become separated from the corresponding expense form either in transit from the employee to the accounting department or during processing in the accounting department.
Many business forms have been devised which provide a combination order form, check and envelope (U.S. Pat. No. 2,116,230 of Berkowitz), a statement and envelope (U.S. Pat. No. 826,492 of Dewes), a pay stub and envelope (U.S. Pat. No. 2,118,064 of Baechle), an arrival notice and envelope (U.S. Pat. No. 1,884,669 of Hannan), a file envelope and contents form (U.S. Pat. No. 2,503,592 of Pate) and an invention record and envelope (U.S. Pat. No. 2,408,626 of Green). Also commercially available are TOPS.TM. form travel planners, including a pocket travel itinerary with a built-in pocket, and a weekly expense envelope, consisting of an envelope with a form printed on both sides.
None of the available forms are equally convenient for all aspects of the recordkeeping process, i.e., for the employee's receipt saving and tabulation of expenses, for sending the table and receipts to the accounting office, and for maintaining records in the accounting office. In fact, the configurations of many of the above-identified forms may act as a hinderance to convenient storage of the forms that are received in the accounting office, since they are odd sizes and are not designed for storage in standard size files.